This application claims a benefit of foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a-d) from GB 0031761.0, filed Dec. 29, 2000, and GB 0102278.9, filed Jan. 29, 2001, the entire contents of both of which are hereby expressly incorporated by reference for all purposes.
This invention relates to a data queue system.
In accordance with the invention, there is provided a data queue system comprising: plural memory blocks defined in memory; a data queue comprising a number of memory blocks, each non-final memory block including a link to the following block in the data queue and, a queue descriptor stored in memory, the queue descriptor comprising: a first identifier identifying the final block in the queue; a second identifier identifying the memory location where the most recent read commit occurred and, a third identifier identifying the memory location where the most recent write commit occurred.
This invention can allow both hardware and software to interact with the queue system, and the queue descriptor in particular. This invention can also allow a number of queued to be set up in the memory which is not limited by hardware.
In the embodiments, a read commit occurs as a consequence of receipt of an acknowledgement that data read out of a queue is no longer required. Similarly, a write commit occurs as a consequence of receipt of an acknowledgement that data occurs as a consequence of receipt of an acknowledgement that data written to a queue is to be made available for reading.